I agree that the early saints were quite millennial and many had an expectation that the second coming would occur in their lifetime. But it seems to me that if there was a pervasive and deep belief that the end was just around the corner you could expect to find much less planting, sowing, building and colonizing than was actually observed. If someone thought she would sign up for plural marriage because it would only be for a few years, you would also expect her to balk at the long-term commitment that settlement building required after a few years. I don’t know if this was a wide spread phenomenon or not, but as far as I have read it seems like the majority of saints went to St. George or wherever else they were sent, tried to construct damns that repeatedly washed out and stuck to the arduous tasks assigned to them. There were people who gave up and returned to Salt Lake or the East, but my impression is that these people were part of a small minority.

Jeff,

I agree that religions have to compete on a market for adherents and that the beliefs and practices of those religions will determine whether they prosper or disappear. Perhaps this is one reason why Mormonism has become more mainstream in our beliefs–we wouldn’t experience the growth we desire otherwise. On the other hand, it is worth noting that this isn’t a race to the bottom–churches experiencing the highest growth rates are those that require more of their people–those that require nothing or have no real tenants that differentiate them from a bowl of mush are dead on the vine. As the study I cited suggests, belief in God without more motivates people to do very little (thus rendering them largely irrelevant in my view).

You comment about out competing other religions sounds like Weber. But I’m skeptical about explaining disparate economies on the basis of religion. No doubt that being a committed Muslim takes a lot of time–and as the authors of the study I cited suggest, attending church correlates negatively with economic growth. But Mormon’s also spend a lot of time in church and give a large chunk of their cash to the church as well–yet I don’t know that they are lagging other groups economically. Another problem that I see is separating out religion from the culture–if a Mormon has 10 kids, is that religious or cultural? I like this study because the authors tried to link economic growth to what are generally considered core religious variables.

It’s strange how our three degrees of glory have really watered down Hell. Maybe we don’t emphasize enough the anguish and suffering of the damned. I would also like to see a return to ironic Hells.

On the issue of faith being dead without economic growth, I agree with the observation but would like to point out that it seems a very Calvinistic view. In that view, those who prosper economically prove themselves to be those chosen by God–those predestined to be his followers. This is a crass oversimplification of the intricacies of Calvinistic theology but it does seem to have played itself out that way in the Netherlands and in the USA from the very beginning. In fact, it still seems to be a fundamental of old-school Northeastern WASP society, even if the centuries have tempered it somewhat through secularization resulting from commercialized materialism.

Most of my ancestors went from poverty to a little bit less than poverty when they joined up with the church.

Like any religious system, Mormonism has to compete on the open market for converts. Mormonims, in other words, must supply what consumers demand, and consumers don’t want to much Hell in their religious diet. Let’s face it: Hell sucks.

In my understanding, Hell tends to flourish as a concept in insular communities such as small fundamentalist churches and in dictatorships (such as those in the Arab world) where religions do not compete in a free market for adherents.

Freedom, in other words, forces religions to compete, and when religions compete they become less ruthless and their doctrines less brutal.

You’re right, my comments have a strong Weberian tilt. I think it’s a good framework, though I’d add that I don’t use the word “compete” in just it’s economic sense. A religion might enable a culture to outcompete its rivals by sanctioning ruthlessness or brutality — e.g. suicide bombings or the slave trade.

These studies are fascinating. Christians often remark that the sheer resilience of religious belief in the face of human suffering implies the “Truth” of those beliefs. Studies like the one Mat cites suggest the more plausble explanation, however: certain religious beliefs – such as the one in heaven and hell – foster the sort of social cooperation that makes the survival of a particular religious community more likely over the long term. Thus, rather than saying that widespread religious beliefs are somehow “True,” we should probably just infer that they confer survival advantages that have helped Christians, for example, to outcompete Aztecs.

This doesn’t preclude metaphysics, of course. One could still have faith in the Truth of one’s beliefs. One should, however, be pretty cautious about infering Truth from the simple fact of a religion’s success.